SOME GRAVE MISSIONARY PROBLEMS.
By Arthur T. Pierson
[Rev. A. T. Pierson in Missionary Review of the World.] (3) LET us look a moment at the Carnal Spirit, which means the spirit of self-indulgence in all its breadth and length. This may be illustrated in two ways: First, by the comparative cost of missions and of other expenditures, even in Christian communities. Taking $1,000 as the basis of the estimate, it is reckoned that we spend annually on schools, $30; on footwear, $60; on cotton goods, $65; on woolen goods, $75; on meat, $100; on breadstuffs, $150; kid gloves and feathers, $20; on tobacco, $200; on drink, $300. To state it differently, out of every $1,000, we spend for food, $218; clothing, $250; ostrich plumes, $2; education, $30; tobacco and rum, $500; missions, $2. Our gifts to missions are, therefore, but $2 out of $1,000—as much as the ladies give for ostrich plumes! If this does not reveal appalling extravagance on the one hand, it certainly does show appalling parsimony on the other. And, if expenditure for God's work is to be estimated by comparative outlay, this is a reproach and a shame. It may be said that this is an estimate of money as expended, not by Christians, but by society at large, in Christian lands. Yet no disciple of Christ can prayerfully consider this tabulated statement without being impressed that even devout believers can not exculpate themselves from responsibility for such conditions of things. If they do not in this case always lead the way, they are too prompt to follow where others lead. Another illustration of the carnal spirit is suggested in the following relic of one of the most godly men and ministers of the Scotch Church. Dr. Andrew Bonar once made a quaint analysis of the zeal of the preacher. He reckoned that out of one hundred ounces, personal ambition had twenty-three; love of praise, nineteen; denominational pride, fifteen; pride of talent, fourteen; love of authority, twelve; bigotry, ten; while love of God might claim four, and love to man as man, three. The late Dr. A. J. Gordon, of Boston, was studying the subject of comparative expenditure, even in the churches. He made careful investigation as to the conditions of churches within, say, a radius of twenty miles from the Clarendon Street church in Boston, and he found that the amount of money annually expended for organs, choirs, and other musical performances, averaged ten times as much as the whole sum given in these churches to missions—and published his own statement to that effect. We have personally known facts in our own observation that fully sustain this statement of Dr. Gordon's. (4) The Secular Spirit. By this we mean the constant tendency and temptation to magnify what is temporal and visible over that which is eternal and invisible. This seems to be the special form of temptation against which we are warned as that which comes through the world. The flesh seems to represent innate depravity and carnality. The devil seems to stand for lies and wiles, or denial of truth and a delusive and subtle evasion of duty; but the world represents the temporal and visible order, good and desirable, but oftentimes an obstacle and hindrance to the clear vision of things spiritual and divine. Nothing is, perhaps, more fatal to a true missionary13spirit than the secular spirit. For example, the spirit of what we call modern enterprise has never yet found its way into missions, certainly not since apostolic times. There have been what we might call spurts and starts in this direction, but no steady, faithful, onward and upward movement. For example, it is now more than fifty years ago since Dr. Angus, of London, made the proposition in his famous missionary sermon, that the Christian church should put men enough in the field, and set apart money enough for the work, to evangelize the world in the course of the half century then remaining. He demonstrated, mathematically, that the church was strong enough, numerically, to supply the men and women by giving one out of a hundred to the direct work, and financially abundantly able to supply all the money by giving one out of every hundred dollars of income. His proposition was not only never seriously followed, but it was laughed at as an impossible scheme. Yet it is perfectly obvious that there was nothing in it either unreasonable or impossible. In the time of Esther, when Ahasuerus wished to reach the uttermost part of his empire in the shortest possible time, in order to save the Jews, the queen's people, from destruction, he had a proclamation translated into every language of his empire, and the swiftest posts carried it to its bounds within nine months, and yet he had none of the facilities of the printing-press, steam transportation, or electric telegraph; and his empire was probably fifteen hundred miles in one direction by three thousand in the other. There were three such proclamations successively sent forth by him in his empire, and this fact seems to be recorded that a lesson might be put permanently before the Christian church as to the possibility of the "evangelization of the world in a single generation." (5) The Scientific Spirit. We do not mean that there is anything necessarily antagonistic between science and Christianity; of course not. True science is as truly divine truth as revelation; but scientific theories and facts are different things, and scientific inferences are sometimes strangely delusive and misleading. For example, there is a tendency in our day to carry Herbert Spencer's philosophy of evolution into Christianity and even Christian work. The basis of evolution is, of course, development and survival of the fittest, and the effect of this, when carried into Christianity, is to make the Bible nothing but a book which marks a peculiar stage in the evolution of revealed truth; to make Christ only a personal factor, representing also a stage in the evolution of manhood toward perfection; and to make all heathen religions steps and stages in a final evolution of a perfect religious system. With this philosophy permeating Christian missions, the heart of Christian endeavor is paralyzed. We may let the heathen alone. Why not? They will come out all right in the end, and it is not probable that we can do much even to hasten this slow process which, like other evolutions, takes ages to accomplish.